


where your footsteps hollowed, I followed without fail

by selcouthinspired



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars: Ahsoka - E. K. Johnston
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Courting Rituals, F/F, Falling In Love, Love Confessions, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, WLW in Star Wars, please feel free to use the previous tag for your wlw in star wars, would love to read more wlw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:54:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24981892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selcouthinspired/pseuds/selcouthinspired
Summary: A few months after the fall of the Empire and the rise of the New Republic, medic Kaeden Larte receives a transmission from now obsolete, sub-space Rebellion frequency Fulcrum.
Relationships: Kaeden Larte/Ahsoka Tano
Comments: 19
Kudos: 51





	where your footsteps hollowed, I followed without fail

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was inspired by all those Mandalorian rumors! I can’t wait for season 2

* * *

_I wanted to be together more_

_I wanted it just as much as you_

_A different season, a different flower_

\- the flower by Leo (ft. Maximilian Hecker)

* * *

4 ABY

* * *

“When you said it might be awhile before we see each other again,” Kaeden said, going for smooth but failing spectacularly, “you certainly weren’t lying.”

Ahsoka was taller. Her lekku and montrals were longer, too, the blue stripes that adorned them tapering like rippling water. Her facial markings had varied as well, no longer exactly matched the holographic insignia that had flashed to life before her eyes when she’d accepted Fulcrum’s transmission. Now, Fulcrum stood at the top of the skiff of her T-6, cloaked in long, white, hooded cape, ornate staff in her hand. Kaeden equated her to a character from the fairytales her parents would tell her and Miara when they were both young.

Despite the smile Ahsoka gave her, Kaeden couldn’t help but notice that sadness seemed to hang around her. It was obvious in her posture, in the tightening of the skin around her eyes. She drew her hood back and stepped down from the ship, came to stand directly before her. Kaeden discovered that she had to look up just to meet Ahsoka’s gaze.

“It’s good to see you,” Ahsoka said warmly, then her eyes, flickering to Kaeden’s right temple, turned concerned. “What happened?”

”Oh,” Kaeden said, pressing her fingertips over the scar, a by now unconscious effort to hide it. “It’s nothing. Just a run in with some Imperials a few years back. They’d recognized me from Raada.”

Ahsoka’s expression fell incrementally. She met Kaeden’s gaze directly and said, apologetically, “It was my fault, then. I put a target on your back.”

Kaeden parted her lips, ready to protest, but something stopped her. Some part of it was true, and Kaeden had the feeling that no amount of denials would erase the guilt currently residing on Ahsoka’s face. Kaeden just needed her to know she didn’t blame her, that it was fine; she was alive, after all, a story to match the scar.

”The Empire is gone, now, and so is my record,” Kaeden offered a smile. “Don’t worry about it. I certainly don’t. Besides, it was a small price to pay, for getting to meet you.”

Ahsoka regarded her with incredulous expression.

”... What?” Kaeden asked, sheepish.

”Nothing, it’s just...” Ahsoka trailed off, sighed, and said, fondly, ”You haven’t changed a bit. Thank you for coming. I know I left the mission specs pretty vague. I would have shown my face, but after so long with being forced to hide my identity, it’s...”

”... difficult to trust our newfound freedom?” Kaeden supplied where’d she’d tapered off.

Ahsoka only nodded, continued, “I don’t know how long this mission will take. And I know you must have other obligations. If you decide you don’t want to come along, I understand.”

”I have no obligations, not anymore,” Kaeden responded, patting the side of her duffel. “Besides, I’ve already packed. I’m in this for the long haul.”

Ahsoka’s expression softened. Her entire being seemed to slump in relief. She readjusted her grip on her staff, offered her free hand...

... and Kaeden took it without hesitance.

”What about my sister, though?” Kaeden asked, Ahsoka leading her up the ramp.

Ahsoka threw her a smirk over her shoulder and asked, “Who do you think was flying the ship?”

* * *

Besides Miara, there was an older man —a former Clone trooper — named Rex. He shook her hand and called her _sir_ with an un-ironic respect. Kaeden liked him instantly. And she liked the ones they picked up along the way, too, even if she felt a bit out of place among them. Sabine, Bo-Katan, Rex and even Miara kept up a camaraderie with Ahsoka that Kaeden didn’t feel she had anymore. Watching them all interact made her wonder if she’d ever had it at all.

Kaeden had never had trouble making friends, however, and she found her footing with everyone fairly quickly. Everyone except Ahsoka, of course. Miara, who knew her best, was the only one who noticed her strange behavior around the former Jedi, and she had no qualms about calling her out on it one day in the privacy of their shared quarters. The others had gone out to tour a ship dealer’s lot, looking to find them bigger (and faster) transportation in their search for Ezra Bridger.

”You should have gone with them,” Kaeden said, “They could have used their pilot’s expertise.”

”Don’t try and change the subject,” Miara snapped. “Somethings wrong. I know we didn’t always get to talk during the war, but that doesn’t give you an excuse to not tell me what’s going on now.”

Kaeden sighed, slumped back in her bunk. She ran a hand down her cheek and said, “I just... don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’d thought I’d buried my feelings the day we said goodbye to her. But they’ve crawled back up. And every interaction I have with her now is mired by the way I feel. It makes things so awkward. None of the rest of you seem to have this problem.”

”That’s because the love you have for Ahsoka is different from ours,” Miara intoned, exasperated.

Kaeden’s face flushed.

”Is it that obvious?”

”It was obvious over twenty years ago. It’s obvious, still,” Miara deadpanned.

When Kaeden couldn’t formulate a response, Miara continued, “You’re nearly forty years old, Kaeden. Isn’t it time you just talk to her? It’s not like you two are getting any younger.”

“What am I supposed to say?” She asked, helplessly. “ _Hey, Ahsoka. I’ve had a crush on you since the day we met. And it hasn’t gone away, despite all this time and distance you’ve placed between us. And being together again is really hard because of it._ ”

”Yes!” Miara exclaimed, “Exactly that. Say exactly that!”

Kaeden groaned, melodramatic, “But what if she doesn’t feel the same?”

”Out of every medic in the galaxy, she picked you to join her team,” Miara reminded. “And this is Ahsoka we’re talking about. She probably had like, thirty candidates to choose from. But she chose _you_. If that doesn’t speak volumes, then I don’t know what does.”

”But we haven’t seen each other in over two decades,” Kaeden said dismally. She slumped forward, placed her head in her hands. “It’s not like I don’t have reason to feel the way I do. I told Ahsoka I could kiss her, back when she’d saved me. You know what she said, Miara? She said ‘ _thanks_.’”

”That’s... ouch. But that was also over two decades ago. She’s changed. And her putting all the distance between you both was because she was trying to protect you,” Miara said softly. A moment later, the bed dipped. Kaeden looked through her fingers and to the side to find her sister sitting beside her. She rubbed one hand up and down her back. “Think about how guilty she must’ve felt, for years. Think about how guilty she must feel, still.”

Kaeden thought of the way she’d looked when she’d noticed her scar. She closed her eyes, let out a long breath...

”You’re right about that,” Kaeden conceded, opening her eyes. “But that doesn’t mean Ahsoka feels the same way I do.”

Miara rolled her eyes, huffed and slid from the bed and to the floor in a dramatic display.

”What?” Kaeden asked, peering down at her sister’s now upside down face.

”I build bombs for a living...” Miara muttered, pointing at her. “But I don’t think I could ever build an explosive well enough to penetrate _your_ thick karking skull.”

* * *

“Welcome to _The Convor_.”

Kaeden peered up at their new ship from the ground. She didn’t know models very well, but Miara did. Her younger sister asked,

”Corellia make?”

”XS stock light freighter,” Sabine confirmed with a smile. “What do you think?”

”It’s kind of... an eye-sore.” Kaeden confessed, hoping she wouldn’t offend the younger woman. But Sabine only laughed.

”We’ll make adjustments,” Miara promised. She turned to Sabine with a smirk and said, “I trust our resident artist will give it a new paint job, one to satisfy Kaeden’s obviously high standards.”

”Of course,” Sabine huffed, rolling her eyes good-naturedly. “This is _me_ we’re talking about, here.”

Kaeden smiled. Her younger sister and Sabine had clicked right away, bonding over their shared passion for crafting explosives. Now they traded tips and swapped stories whenever they had the opportunity to do so.

A sudden twinge of sad nostalgia seeped into Sabine’s expression when she said, patting the ships outer plating, “My last crew lived on a modified VCX-100. The make was only a little different from this one.”

Kaeden thought of all the ships she’d served on, the last twenty-some years. She’d moved from frigate to frigate, always going where she was needed. She’d patched up countless soldiers for the Rebellion, and she’d made friends, but she’d never been able to forge the kind of connections that Sabine obviously had.

”Let’s head inside,” Kaeden encouraged them, deciding if she were going to forge those connections now, then she had to stop being afraid to lose the people around her. She wrapped her arms around their shoulders and walked with them up the ramp and into the ship.

* * *

Bo-Katan was a practical kind of person. She wore armor same as Sabine, carried a dark-saber and approached everything she did with a tacticians precision. Including, but not limited to, game night.

“Dejarik is rigged!” Sabine fumed, sitting back as Bo, smile smug, wiped out her last piece from the holo-table.

They were surface side for the first time in weeks, waiting for intel that would direct their next course of action.

”Dejarik isn’t rigged,” Bo said calmly, resetting the game. “You’re just bad at playing. You need strategy.”

”What I need is another game to play,” Sabine huffed. She slid off the cushioned seat across from Bo, let Rex take her place. She walked across the common area toward Miara, who sat on a crate fashioning up a set of charges she’d been working on for the past week. Ahsoka, who sat beside Kaeden at the little table built into the wall, suggested,

”We could play crokin.”

Sabine asked absently, now distracted by Miara’s wiring work, “What’s that?”

”You remember that game?” Kaeden asked, surprised. She turned to Ahsoka with widening eyes. Ahsoka gave her a hesitant quirk of the lips and said, somewhat bashfully, “Well, yeah.”

”That’s another game that requires strategy,” Miara teased Sabine. “I think Sabine would lose playing it, too.”

Sabine shot her an unamused look.

”Regardless,” Ahsoka said, rising to her feet, “I’d like to play.”

”We don’t have a board, though,” Kaeden said.

”Then we’ll make one,” Ahsoka shrugged, offering her a hand. Kaeden eyed her palm, lowered her gaze to hide her blush, and took it. Ahsoka helped her up, and Miara asked,

”Where will we get the pieces?”

”In the market we passed on our way in,” Ahsoka responded, hand falling away as Kaeden stood. Kaeden tried not to let her disappointment show, started rooting through the panel in the wall that housed their mix of credits. She grabbed a few, never certain of how much they’d need, pushed the panel back into place and then quickly caught up to Ahsoka’s side.

* * *

As they walked through the forest toward the village, Kaeden became keenly aware of the fact that this was the first time she’d been alone with Ahsoka since they’d reunited.

”I missed you,” Kaeden blurted. _Way to be subtle._

”I missed you, too,” Ahsoka said quietly, surprising her for the second time in one day. “Sometimes I thought about reaching out to you, but I didn’t want to risk it. You had a chance at a normal life, without me interfering. I owed that to you.”

“I don’t think you could’ve made life any more dangerous than it already was,” Kaeden confessed in an equally quiet voice. “There were some moments I didn’t think I’d make it. The frigates I served on could be attacked by any number of enemies: pirates, crime syndicates, Imperials themselves.”

”I was still the catalyst, though,” Ahsoka said, “If I’d been more careful, if I’d been less selfish, then you might’ve lived a normal life.”

”The Empire would’ve come to Raada regardless of where you were in the galaxy,” Kaeden reminded her softly. “I’m terrified to even think about what life might’ve turned out like, hadn’t you shown up to help us.”

Ahsoka winced, “Well, if I’m being honest, I didn’t show up just to help you. I had no idea the Empire would come to Raada. I’d had every intention to leave, as soon as they arrived. But I couldn’t just abandon you all. Nor did I want to. I’d lost my way for awhile, but you helped remind me who I was.”

Kaeden considered her, warm feelings invading her chest. Ahsoka still seemed dejected, though, seemed to carry the shame of the decisions she hadn’t made. Kaeden said as much.

“You seem sad these days, like how you did on Raada. I don’t mean to pry or offend you, but... we’re you ever happy? Did you ever find ways to be?”

For a long time, Ahsoka said nothing. Kaeden bit her lip, internally berated herself. How could she have asked something so insensitive? Ahsoka just confessed she’d thought about reconnecting for years, but couldn’t because she feared it would pin an even bigger target on Kaeden’s back than already existed.

”Everytime I revealed myself to people, I took great risk in doing so,” Ahsoka eventually spoke up, voice barely above a whisper. “I had to consider operations I was putting in jeopardy, Rebel cells who could suffer if I ever slipped up. I took a lot of risks, and I have a lot of regrets.”

”But that’s not what has you so down, now, is it?”

Ahsoka finally looked at her. Her eyes conveyed a deep sadness, an impenetrable guilt. Her mouth twisted ruefully at Kaeden’s words.

”You were always a good listener,” Ahsoka told her. “I’m not sure if I ever said so before on Raada, but I liked talking to you.”

”I wish we’d gotten to talk more, before now.”

”That’s one of my regrets,” Ahsoka said. “I wish life would have allowed me the normalcy of showing up and just... saying hi.”

”Well, we have time, now,” Kaeden encouraged. She smiled, struck by a sudden bought of courage, and reached out to take Ahsoka’s hand in her own. She squeezed once, reassuring, before letting her hand fall away. Ahsoka’s eyes widened incrementally, searched her face...

”Sorry,” Kaeden muttered. She looked down, suddenly cautious, but Ahsoka only reached out, retook her hand, and didn’t let go.

”Don’t apologize. You’re right. We do have time.” Ahsoka smiled, real and genuine, and whispered, “ _Hi_.”

Kaeden’s grin was slow to spread, but when it did, she responded, soft as the sensation of Ahsoka’s hand in her own, “ _Hi_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the opening are the translated lyrics to a beautiful song called the flower by artist Leo. performance is here: [the flower](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_3bfhGbgU3s)


End file.
